I know it’s kind of esoteric, but I want to let you in on something that you probably didn’t hear about in the regime media or in any media because it’s not that exciting on the surface. It does illustrate something important, though. There’s nothing about race or oppression; actually, I think we are going to hear about how it’s about race and oppression, but give me a minute. It’s just the Supreme Court unanimously making you and your family significantly safer. And both Justice Thomas and Justice Jackson agreed on it. It goes to show that 99 percent of what’s happening in the courts isn’t the craziness that you guys hear about happening in the courts. It’s just normal stuff.
But the case of Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, is going to have implications beyond just a lawsuit between some individual plaintiffs and companies. And it shows why it’s important to have a functioning judicial system. What’s this case about? There was a truck accident. There are lots of truck accidents in America, as you know from the billboards you constantly see with 1-800 LAW-STUD in a business suit with boxing gloves waiting to take on those bigwigs and get you your money! I used to be involved in a lot of those lawsuits, usually defending one of the many defendants. You see, that’s kind of the key issue here: who can be a defendant? A defendant, in a civil suit, is the guy getting sued, but it’s not usually one guy. It’s usually a bunch of guys and companies. In Montgomery, the plaintiff who got badly injured (in the personal injury game, it is called a “leg-off” case, which is just what it sounds like) sued the truck company, the driver Yosniel Varela-Mojena (alien status unstated), and, importantly, he sued the broker. A truck broker is the entity that gets the cargo job and then farms it out to a trucking company. The theory here was that the truck broker farmed it out to a trucking company that had a bad safety record, and that it was negligent for it to do so because there was a significant chance the trucking company would cause an accident.
Remember, you sue everybody who can possibly be liable in one of these cases. The idea is to bring as many insurance companies as possible and their policy limits into play. Trucking accident cases are golden geese because the injuries are so massive. A solid trucking accident case can be worth $20 million. That’s why you want three or four insurance companies and their policy limits involved, so you sue everybody who you can possibly come up with a theory of liability against.
Except there was a law that had been construed to prevent suing brokers. These injury lawsuits are brought under state negligence law. State law applies to govern most everything in routine civil litigation. This case was removed to federal court for some reason—usually it’s because of what’s called “diversity.” That’s not the commie leftist kind of diversity; it means the parties are from different states. The federal court would then apply state law because there’s no federal common law. So, Montgomery sued, and a federal court was going to apply the state law of the state where it happened.
But there was an issue. There was a federal law that had been interpreted to preempt state laws regarding the potential liability of interstate trucking brokers. In other words, Congress had passed a law that the courts had construed as holding that interstate trucking brokers were not subject to state laws on negligence, effectively immunizing them from this kind of case. The district court ruled that way. The circuit court of appeals agreed, and the plaintiff took the case up to the US Supreme Court, which accepted it.
The Supreme Court looked at the statute and analyzed the text and also looked at the application of it to see what Congress intended. What it determined was that this federal law did not preempt state law, and the plaintiffs’ lawsuit against the broker could proceed. Justice Barrett wrote the opinion for the unanimous Court. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence (joined by Justice Alito) in which he noted that it was a close case, but he agreed with the result. He also pointed out that if the trucking broker industry didn’t like the result, it was free to go to Congress and the president and ask them to pass a law preempting state negligence laws.
In other words, the way this case was handled was totally normal, sane, and smart. This was what courts are supposed to do, not be crazy, not be wacky, but to look at the law and try to apply it as best they can using common rules of statutory interpretation and common sense. In this case, all nine justices agreed, though the other side brought up some good points. That’s common, too—all cases aren’t slam dunks. Sometimes you have to work through them, and it’s tough. But this is what courts should do and, for the most part, it’s what they do. Sadly, what most people see is the crazy. They see the insanity, like the judge who found somebody walking her dog had standing because she thought that Trump’s new East Wing would be ugly. That’s just crazy talk—standing to bring a lawsuit requires an actual compensable injury, not just an aesthetic offense—and it makes normal people think that courts are normally crazy. But in normal litigation, it’s normal.
This was a huge case to the trucking industry – the two lawyers before the Court were Supreme Court superstars (Paul D. Clement for Montgomery, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. for the broker) And this is going to have a big effect on you. Now the brokers are going to have to take a look at the trucking companies that they hire to make sure that they are not scammers or half-steppers. A lot of these trucking companies will hire illegal aliens. That’s why you get all these crashes. Now the brokers, who can be sued if they don’t use reasonable care, are going to have to use reasonable care to make sure they don’t hire Fly-By-Night Trucking Co., LLC, and its fresh-off-the-boat driver, Ogbanou Englishchallengedo.
The libs will cry that we’re racist because now aliens can’t drive 40-ton trucks down our freeways, but let them. This esoteric case is going to keep a bunch of us from getting smushed into a pancake. And that’s how the courts are supposed to work. Now, if only everything would work that way in political cases, too.
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